The leading global event and marketplace for technical communication—known as the tcworld conference—is once again taking place in Stuttgart this autumn. We’re proud to announce that our information architect, Jonatan Lundin, will be on site, presenting his latest insights into user behavior and information design.

In his presentation, Jonatan will explain why users often misunderstand or reject information in user manuals, which makes them think it is not usable. He will also elaborate on how technical communicators can design information in a way that reduces the risk of user misunderstanding.

“Reading comprehension research shows that relevant background knowledge is important to properly understand a text,” Jonatan says. “But, since users try a product out before using the manual, they may create an invalid mental model. This mental model is the background causing users to misunderstand texts they find.”

Jonatan is an information architect at Excosoft with more than 20 years of experience from the technical communication industry. He is a researcher at Mälardalen University in Sweden, studying seeking and reading behavior and how to design information for the searching user.